Discounter JetBlue Airways said Thursday it will increase passengers' legroom by removing a row from each plane in its Airbus A320 fleet.

And, defying the conventional industry wisdom, Jet Blue says it expects to save money by doing so through staffing reductions and fuel savings.

"The reason is large cost savings," spokesman Bryan Baldwin says. "The great part is it will be a very good improvement for our customers as well."

To be completed by March, the plan to remove six seats across will give 4 more inches of legroom in the front one-third of the cabin — rows 1 to 9.

After the change, those passengers will have 36 inches vs. the current 32 inches.

The emergency rows — 10 and 11 in the new configuration — will remain the same at 37 to 38 inches. The back rows — 12 to 25 — will also retain their current 34 inches.

Under the plan, the total number of seats in an A320 flight will shrink to 150 from 156. JetBlue flies a one-class cabin, and says it need not increase fares to cover the cost of losing seats that it would have the opportunity to sell.

The New York-based carrier, whose fleet is mostly A320s, says it expects to save about $30 million in five years. Though the airline will have fewer seats to sell, the gain will come from fuel savings related to the lighter weight of the plane, and from having fewer flight attendants.

Federal rules mandate one flight attendant for every 50 seats, so the change allows JetBlue to staff flights with three attendants vs. the current four.

Removing the seats lightens the aircraft by about 900 pounds, resulting in greater fuel savings, it says.

Susan Daimler, a marketing executive of Seatguru.com, which maintains a website on airline seats, says, "Two inches make a huge amount of difference" in passenger comfort.

After the change, JetBlue will have more legroom than the industry average of 31 to 32 inches in coach seats, she says.

The airline industry has tried increasing legroom before to lure passengers. In February 2000, American launched its "More Room Throughout Coach" campaign, removing an average of two rows on nearly all its aircraft.

Although American didn't raise fares specifically to offset revenue lost by having fewer seats to sell, American did eliminate some of its most deeply discounted fares. The effect: a somewhat higher average fare on each flight.

The airline dropped the campaign four years later as travel demand sagged and customers continued to flock to cheaper fares elsewhere.

US Airways CEO Douglas Parker recently said his airline has no plans to remove seats to increase legroom, citing, among other things, the failure of American to attract more higher-paying customers.

"What they found is they lost more money than they would have otherwise because they couldn't get enough people to pay for the product, and they had fewer seats to sell," Parker said in a Dec. 5 interview with USA TODAY reporters and editors.